CINCO/ Mimos y Malabaristas (Mimes and Jugglers)

Cada uno da lo que recibe
y luego recibe lo que da,
nada es más simple,
no hay otra norma:
nada se pierde,
todo se transforma.
(Each one gives that which he receives
and then receives that which he gives,
nothing is more simple,
it’s really okay,
nothing gets lost,
everything is changed.)
—Jorge Drexler, “Todo Se Transforma”

As Michael, Lucy, and I walked in Barrio Bellas Artes one warm evening in Santiago, suddenly many more people filled the street, all walking in the same direction. So we followed. There, in front of el Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, two mimes were performing in the street, in the middle of six lanes of one-way traffic.

We had seen mimes before in Chile. They wear white face paint and dress in a Charlie Chaplin style. They tend to be smallish young men and are always very slender and fit. I haven’t yet seen a female mime. Some mimes remain silent; some “whistle” word-like sounds through a tiny kazoo inside their mouths, adding a tonal commentary to their performances.

A favorite mime performs in the early evening along one side of Santiago’s huge main square, la Plaza de Armas, where a block-long bench provides seating for spectators. He has a few props—a suitcase, cane, hat—but only resorts to them when the preferred prop—unsuspecting pedestrians who happen to walk onto the “stage”—isn’t available at the moment. He propositions young women, luring them away from their companions. He gets down on one knee to propose marriage. He mimics peoples’ mannerisms, gestures to the audience at the largeness of a woman’s rear end, and exaggerates a businessman’s determined stride. He even steals babies in strollers from their parents.

It’s tricky to photograph a mime, because getting close enough for a good picture means you risk becoming part of the show. So watch out! This is the mime in la Plaza de Armas, Santiago.

A mime aims his worst mockery at those who resist or ignore him. One evening we watched him engage a small, elderly woman walking slowly along the plaza with the help of two arm-gripping canes. First, he mimicked her slow, stilting walk. He might have stopped there. But she turned to scowl at him, and the movement lifted one of her crutches somewhat. So, he jerked in fear, as if she had threatened him. She rolled her eyes, and he scolded her for the threat. She continued to frown and press onward, trying to get past him. So, now, he moved way ahead and pretended to pull her along by an invisible rope, pausing to check his watch and tap a foot in frustration at her slow progress. She still continued to frown and, next, he joined her, walking alongside very chummily as if they were now close acquaintances. As she—finally!—passed beyond the stage, he gestured a grand goodbye, as if to an illustrious friend. “Wow,” I thought, “making fun of a handicapped, elderly woman in public, it doesn’t get a whole lot more transgressive than that.”

Michael and Lucy were recruited by this same mime:

On my 2005 visit to Santiago, Lucy and I walked out of the Paseo Estado and into the mime’s territory in the Plaza de Armas. One minute we were having a lively conversation with each other, anonymous in a crowd, and then suddenly there were no more people around us. Where did they all go? Uh oh. We were alone on a stage with a short, white-faced man, being watched by him and a lot of other people. I felt helpless. Was I being taken advantage of by the mime? Was it dangerous? I had to make a quick decision. (As Babar says, “Three seconds in which to act—and no gun!”) I decided to play along. I felt an attraction to give in to the show, to accept being made fun of. I don’t remember what happened next. I sorta passed out. When I woke up, the mime was releasing us to the sidelines. I felt a little foolish and a lot of relief. In retrospect, I see that working with defensiveness and resistance is the mime’s trade. He makes fun of you and, if you resist, he makes fun of your resistance. It’s useless to try to escape: I once saw him jump onto the back of a fast-moving bicycle in order to engage the rider: the mime engages everyone who enters his space.
—Michael

Children always sit in front at the mime shows, fascinated and laughing uncontrollably. The mime acts out what we are forbidden to do, and children love it. Sometimes, they get up and race toward the mime and then back to their watching parents, as if on a dare. They breathe a visible sigh of relief as they sit back down again, having survived proximity to a fire without getting burned. Sometimes they’re drawn more slowly toward the mime. A powerful, hypnotic magnet appears to pull them; they can’t resist it. He, in turn, receives them happily, uses them as assistants or in brief skits, and afterward turns them loose again. Whew!

The first time we saw a mime working in traffic was in Valdivia, alongside the main Plaza de la República, with the crowd gathered on either side of the street. We were astonished that such a thing is allowed. The mime stepped in front of cars to stop them and make the drivers wait, he pulled objects out of the back of a pick-up truck before dropping them back in, and he even hitched a ride for a few seconds on a truck bumper. Drivers looked as if they felt annoyed at being made to wait—the alternative was to risk running over the mime—but they tried to keep their cool, while the kids in the audience howled.

The two mimes working together in front of el Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago went a significant notch further, though. Maybe it seemed this way, in part, because we were sitting on the museum steps and could look down across the full depth of the stage. They danced between lanes, keeping an eye on the traffic flow. I found myself imagining bullfighters. The mimes stretched out flat on the roadway at times, keeping cars waiting, making cars stop, start, stop, according to their whim, then stepping deftly aside to let one pass. When the red light at the next intersection halted traffic, the mimes would climb into the back seat of a car and gesture for the driver to get going, which of course he couldn’t do. They exited one car waving women’s lacy underwear, scolding the driver, even sniffing the underpants in an act of mock outrage. And all this in six lanes of active traffic.

When I stopped laughing, I realized with a shiver that mimes working in the street really are like bullfighters. They are small and slender and fit because they have to be in order to stay alive. We get to feel temporarily heroic with them, but from the safety of our seats.

That same evening, after the mimes ended and moved on, a payaso (clown) set up in front of the museum for a show of jokes and magic tricks. He also juggled and did something I don’t have a word for, even in English, a kind of slithering of three-to-six transparent “glass” balls (silicon or acrylic plastic?) of various sizes over and under one finger after another, which made them look magically, eerily alive. Then he balanced the clear balls on a series of body parts—knee, elbow, finger, ear—and finally on the top of his head. I thought of a line from Tomie dePaola’s The Clown of God, “… and now for the sun in the heavens!”

We watched a lithe, Asian-looking woman juggle flaming sticks at the intersection in front of cars stopped for each red light. In growing twilight, the juggling sticks circled high in the air like fireworks. She aimed to end each sequence just before the light turned green. Then another juggler, a male apprentice, took her place as she instructed and corrected his routine between red lights.

Other jugglers practiced with balls on a sidewalk next to the museo. One young man kept seven balls in the air, over and over, for maybe an hour of quick repetitions—mostly very successful. Then he teamed up with a young woman: First, the man stretched out horizontal on the pavement. Next, the woman—holding three juggling clubs—placed her pointed toes in his hands. Together he lifted and she jumped so that she now stood on and was held in the air by his vertical arms. From there, she began to juggle the clubs. The attempts didn’t always work—so many angles and positions needed to be just right—but when they did it was an impressive sight, a confabulation of dance/acrobatics/juggling.

We never found out why so many street performers were out that night, maybe something to do with Santiago a Mil, the month-long summer theater festival in the city. Even though it was a Sunday night, children of all ages stayed out late with their parents, enjoying this playful, art-filled evening. The arts are more visible in everyday Chilean life than here in the United States. Every Chilean seems to play music or sing or dance or paint or write or act. What a treat to happen upon art.

—Jane